Okay, I brought this idea to Lil, and she thought it was a good idea, so here goes!

This thread is for anyone who needs help in making a signature or avatar. Just post your questions in here Any sort of questions are okay, from Photoshop tutorials to how to make animations to how to make transparent images...etc.

However, this thread isn't for requesting sigs or avatars, just requesting help on them.

If you also know a cool tutorial for how to do a special effect, post it in here, too

Edit: Please do NOT PM me directly for help. I get enough PMs a day as it is.

Since this is asked nearly on a daily basis, here is how to get your sig under 50kb and retain the quality!

In Photoshop: Go to File > Save For Web. Make sure it is showing Optimized View. Select JPG and lower the quality until the size it says in the corner is below 50kb. If you want to save as a GIF, then lower the number of colors until the size reads below 50kb.

In Paint Shop Pro: Go to File > Save As, and chose JPG. Underneath Save and Cancel is a button that says Options. Click this, and adjust the quality slider. This you'll have to guess-and-check on. If you're saving as a GIF, then go to Color > Decrease Color Depth and set it to 256 colors.

I'll start out by posting a quick tutorial I wrote on how to make a signature image transparent

To do it in Paint Shop Pro, make your sig image as you want it. With the paint bucket tool, color everything you want to be transparent a color that doesn't show up anywhere in the image (neon green is a safe bet most of the time). Then go to the colors menu, and all the way the bottom is "Decrease Color Depth". Decrease it to 256 colors. Then again under the colors menu is "Set Palette Transparency". Select this, and when the first box pops up hit okay. When the second one comes up, click "Set the transparency value to pallete entry", and then (BEFORE hitting okay), click on an area in the image that has the color you want to be transparent. Then click okay, and save your signature as a GIF file.

How to do it in Photoshop will be posted once I remember how to do it...